


Always Choose A Bigger Pot

by Go0se



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (I mean it's not much of a surprise), Elves Have Expressive Ears, Everything Is Better On The Moon, Food Porn, Light Angst, Mostly Fluff, My First Work in This Fandom, Prompt Fill, Surprise Ending, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-08-24 06:31:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8361019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: The planning, working and implementing phases of the Great Potluck Project.





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my 'Food Porn' square on my OTW Bingo card, and also as my first contribution to TAZ fandom after marathoning it like a week ago! \o/ All the chapters are going to be pretty short.  
> Also, to be clear, food porn is stories and/or pictures of very detailed and usually delicious food, not actual porn involving or with food. Just in case anyone was confused.
> 
> The last line of this chapter is directly from [Will Be King](http://archiveofourown.org/works/253913), by softlyforgotten, which is about RPF gardening magic and will otherwise not be followed at all in this fic, but I did echo it very intentionally so I needed to give credit where it's due. If you like bandom and magician AUs the whole 'Thornton Hill' series is amazing, and I recommend it.  
> In the mean time. Cooking!
> 
> ~

 

Carey and Killian showed up at the Tres Horny Boys’ swanky dorm one morning about a week after the aforementioned boys had got back from Refuge, and they were both grinning. 

That might've been suspicious to begin with if Merle or Taako had answered the door, but instead it was Magnus who got up to get it, and any suspicion sailed right over his head. He smiled back at the two of them. “Hey! What’s up.”  
“Nothing much, Mags.” Carey reached out to high-five him.    
Magnus high-fived her back with one hand and, with the other, stopped her from nabbing his wallet.  “Alright, alright, points for that,” Carey said to his triumphant laugh, bringing both of her arms back to her sides. “Hey, you want to let us in?”  
“Oh— of course, sorry.” 

 

The three of them walked into the main room, Carey and Killian calling out a hello to Merle and Taako, who were lounging around the place. Merle looked over from where he was laying on the shag carpet and pointing his wood arm upwards. It was stretched out about a foot longer than usual, like he was intentionally trying to convince it to climb all the way to the ceiling from where he lay. “’Morning ladies!”

“I’ll start up some coffee,” Magnus announced, going over to the kitchen nook.  
  
“Heya, Merle!” Carey high-fived his non-wooden hand, being careful of her claws. “What’s shaking?”  
“Oh, not much, just these old bones and tree limb. It feels like it's getting colder lately.”  
"Yeah, the temperature's been weird in the dojo too, for a while. I think the technicians are having a look at it." Carey settled herself on the squashy legless chair that hovered just at the edge of the rug. 

  
“Hail and well-met and all that,” Taako said into the room a beat too late, not looking up from his spot on the couch. The elf had what appeared to be every clothing item he owned piled haphazardly around him on the cushions. He was in the middle of pulling a soft purple tunic through his fingers, rubbing a circular pattern on it with two dog-shaped magnets while he muttered under his breath.

“Mending time, huh?” Killian said. She flopped down beside him, or as much as she could get without sitting on the clothes. “Must be nice to use magic. I always feel like such a sucker when I have to use actual needles and thread and stuff.”  
  
“That does sound super slow and inconvenient." With a flourish he held up the now-repaired tunic, eyed it critically for a second, and then nodded and dropped it onto the pile of clothes on his left. “That one’s the ‘done’ pile,” he explained to Killian. “The ones piled on the couch I still have to go through.”

“Makes sense. Where’d you get the magnets?”  
  
“Fantasy souvenir store in Goldcliff.”   
  
"Nice."

 

  
The four of them chatted for a couple minutes while Merle reshrunk his arm and Magnus worked in the kitchen, occasionally clanking something loudly.    
  
“So what brings you ladies to down to our fine living quarters today?” Merle drawled finally, sitting up from the floor. His wood hand had returned to normal size but several new green shoots were blooming out of his forearm. He scratched his beard, squinting between the two of them. “You’re looking awfully smiley.”  
Carey looked over at Killian, a grin stretching her scales over her sharp front teeth. Killian beamed back.  
“… yeah. Now that Merle mentions it, that does seem kind of like the thing you do that we should be worried about,” Taako said.

 

“Coffee's done,” Magnus called. He walked back into the living area, four ceramic mugs hanging off his fingers and a teapot held precariously in his opposite hand. “It’s instant blend but it’s still pretty good; there’s sugar and stuff by the fridge, if anyone wants it.”  He put the supplies down on the coffee table and stood back, looking pleased with himself.  
“Magnus, they’re grinning,” Merle said pointedly, gesturing to Killian and Carey.  
Magnus looked. “… yeah, they are."  
"The wrecking team are  _grinning,_ " Merle repeated, more slowly. "Does that seem like something that happens a lot?"  
"... yeah?"  
  
“Hey, don’t try dropping hints with the big dude or we’ll be here all day,” Taako said, not unkindly—or at least not unkindly for Taako.  
He put aside his mending and clasped his hands together, shifting in his seat so he could see both women without turning his head. “Look, what I want to know is, is this going to be like a montage thing or something we need to accomplish in a side-quest? ‘Cause side-quests take up a lot of time, and we’re already two pages into this thing with only exposition to show for it.”  
“There’s been some character-establishing, too,” Merle admonished mildly. He drank a surprisingly refined sip from his mug and then gave Magnus a thumbs up. "Good coffee, dude."  
Magnus beamed.

 

“Okay, okay, you got us. It’ll be more of a montage,” Killian answered Taako. She matched gazes with Carey. “We were thinking about having... a little celebration. Later, obviously.”

“Y’mean ‘cause Candlenights got all fucked up a while back?” Magnus asked. He flopped onto the couch on the other side of Taako from Killian, carelessly throwing his arm around Taako’s shoulder and what part of Killian's shoulder he could reach. Taako’s ears flattened and he grumbled about his clothes, but they were all crumpled anyway, so Magnus figured the elf couldn’t really be that bothered.

“Yeah,” Carey agreed, “That’s why. But we were thinking, it’s not really fair to ask everyone to get gifts again--”

Killian added, “And there’s a limited amount of stuff you can get on the moon, anyway--”

“—yeah, so it’d all get kinda stale after a while. So we were going to have everyone bring food instead.”

“We wanted you all to try and make a dish,” Killian finished. “I mean, everyone else too, don’t feel pressured or anything. But we were thinking it’d be really cool if everyone made one that was like, to their skills.”

 

At the word ‘dish’, Taako’s ears pricked forwards and then drooped. He looked uncomfortable, which was such a rare expression for him as to actually be surprising, if anyone was watching him.  
No one was at that particular second, though. “What kind of dishes?” Merle asked, looking interested.  
“Just any kind that you want— there’ll be a lot to choose from, so you don’t have to worry about allergies or whatever. As long as you put a notice if it has tree nuts or anything.”  
“What about seafood? Us Highchurch’s kind of specialize in that.”  
“Seafood would be awesome,” Carey confirmed.

  
“I could make, like. A bread,” Magnus hazarded, then got more enthusiastic as he warmed to the idea. “Stew, too, or maybe like a jam? Jams aren’t that hard.”

“Great!” Carey’s  wings were flapping excitedly. She clapped her hands together and rubbed them. “What about you, Taako, you in on this?”  
“Uh. Sure,” Taako said. He shook Magnus’ arm off his shoulder and took up his mug off coffee from the table, shooting Carey a smile. “Taako’s cool with that.”

“Double awesome,” Killian crowed. She pushed herself off from the couch and then suddenly Carey was at her side, looping their arms together. “We’re real glad you’re doing this with us, guys.”

 

  
And so the Great Potluck Project On The Moon began.

 

~


	2. Merle, Oysters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fixed a couple details in the first chapter-- this now happened after the Eleventh Hour arc, which makes slightly more sense timing-wise. \o/

Merle didn’t miss a lot of things about his life before he was an adventurer, but the ocean was one of them.  
Sure, when he and the boys were adventuring there were lakes, sometimes, and lakes were fine, but they weren’t the _ocean._ They didn’t have the same smell on the air, the same kind of sand, the same foot traffic, the same sunsets, or the same seaweed and related flora. They definitely didn’t have unionid bivalves.

  
“Your mom ever showed you two how to do this?” He asked Mavis, as casually as he could, while they were both walking along the beach holding miniature shovels and regular-sized buckets.  
It was a good day for clam digging. The tide was receding, the wind wasn’t too harsh, and the sun was warm but not blinding. Pan was smiling down on them, ol’ Dad would say. Merle wasn’t sure about it, but he kept his mouth shut so he wouldn’t have to explain his arm falling apart to his kids.  
  
His kids who seemed to be in good spirits, like the weather. Both looked healthy. Mavis was wearing a loose pair of green overalls and bare feet, and she’d tied her hair back in a braid that made Merle proud to look at, even though he knew logically he had nothing to do with it. Her hair fastener had a small pearl attached to it.  
Mookie, meanwhile, was mostly wearing a layer of mud. He was running closer to the water so he could chase some unfortunate sea urchins and occasionally pick up shiny rocks and then chuck them into the waves, cheering if they made a big splash. 

Merle was watching him out of the corner of his eye to make sure the kid didn’t head-dive into the waves, of course, but hey. They were beach dwarves; they could all swim.  
He was noticing, though, that Mavis was watching him too. She keeping more of an eye on her brother than on Merle, really. That was alright. He knew this was a sensitive topic. Hell, he wouldn’t be asking if he could think of anything else to say.

  
“Not really,” Mavis said, finally. She scratched her thin beard and then pushed her hair out of her face, where the wind was kicking it up. “I mean, we work on the pearl farm sometimes, just like counting the clams that are still percolating. But we don’t really eat them. We need them for the pearls. And we don’t have, like, a food farm? Mom gets stuff at the market.”  
“Right, right. That makes sense. Well, uh… there’s a first time for everything, huh honey?”  
“Yeah,” Mavis agreed, turning towards the shore again to make sure Mookie hadn’t tried to eat anything. She looked back. “So, what’re we doing?”  
The girl’s a good kid, Merle thinks; certainly better than he deserves, but he feels sometimes like she’s only humouring him. “The trick’s to look for their breathing spots in the sand,” Merle advises anyway in what he hoped was a wise tone. “Here, I’ll show ya.”  


The three of them spent a few hours on the beach, hunting for the little circular breaks in the sand that meant a clam had hidden itself deep in the surf, and then digging them out when they found them. Mookie joined for a couple. He did more staring than digging; he liked sticking his tongue out sideways, same as some of the oysters did. He quickly got bored though, and went back to hunting through the tideline.  
It took a lot of work, but gradually the two buckets that Merle had brought with him on the cannon-trip out filled up with saltwater and glistening dark shells.  


“Who are you making this for, anyway?” Mavis asked when they had decided to pack up for the day. “You’re collecting ‘em for something, right?”  
She and Merle were washing their hands and arms free of all the sand particulates that’d gotten stuck to them while they were digging the clams out of their hiding spaces. Mookie, Pan protect him, had lost a fight with a crustacean in a tide pool; he was sulking over by the wagon parking lot, about a dozen feet from where Merle and Mavis stood.  
“Oh, well. Some, ah… how do I put this. Some friends of mine, at the place where I work—adventuring— are having a get-together. So I’m making it for them.”  
“Oh. That sounds nice.”  
“Yeah.” Merle straightens up and shakes his hands clean, then wipes them dry on his beach tank top. (It’d been a present from Magnus, and it said “#1 Pan Fan” in bright yellow font.) He and Mavis started walking towards the wagon parking lot. “Not to, uh, talk to much of myself here, but speaking of adventuring… I just want you to know, I wish you kids could come with me. Both of you.”  
“Okay, again that sounds super dangerous, actually,” Mavis replied. “Like, I can’t say exactly where you work or anything, because you’re really specific to never say anything about it, but given how you lost your arm and all it doesn’t seem like a good place for, you know. Kids.”     
“Well, come on,” Merle wheedled a little. “I mean we’re not that much more competent than you, really, and we do alright.”  
“You and your friends?”  
“I mean if you want to _call them_ that… yeah. Yeah, we’re friends.”    
“Huh,” Mavis said, and re-adjusted her glasses where they were sliding down her nose.    


When they reached Mookie he immediately got onto his feet and attached himself to Merle’s soulwood arm, spouting questions about how many animals he’d found in the tide pools and whether or not Merle had gotten anything for him on the beach.  
Merle had, in fact. He gently shook his boy into letting go of his arm and then pulled a sand dollar, perfectly formed, out of his pocket. “There ya go, scamp.”  
To his surprise Mookie didn’t try to eat it, but his eyes lit up anyway. “Thanks!” He said happily, the ‘s’ whistling through the gap in his front teeth.  
“I found this for you, too, honey,” Merle added quickly, turning to his step-daughter. He’d found some smooth beach glass, almost a perfect circle, which shimmered a clear green. Looking at it almost made him uneasy, reminding him of planets and the taste of recycled air in his null-suit in that bastard’s awful lab. But Mavis didn’t need to know any of that. “I thought you could make this into a necklace or somethin’,” he said.  
Mavis took it and turned it over in her hands. She glanced back up at Merle and smiled for the first time that day. “Thanks Pops,” she said, “This is real cool.”

Merle smiled back, pleased. Then he paused in surprise as one of the green buds on his wooden arm unfurled into bloom. _  
Figures_ , he thought a second later. Pan the family man-god, and all that. Merle didn’t even find it in him to be annoyed.

   

*

 

Back on the moon Merle climbed slightly unsteadily out of the cannon ball, the two mussel buckets balanced on his arms. He thanked Avi when the boy saluted him with a smile.

After solo-grooving to the elevator music on the way down, he stepped into his and Magnus’ and Taako’s living room and, after taking off his shoes and hanging up his sun visor, made a beeline for the kitchen.

  
Seeing as both of his roommates were so damnably tall, early on they had set things up so that it was functionally two kitchens: one for Magnus and Taako, and one for Merle. They still had one stove and sink, but a small stack of plates and bowls were tucked into the lower cupboards, along with a small box full of cutlery and the ‘Number One Dad’ mug, chipped in several places, that Mookie had gotten him.  


Merle tapped the mug fondly and then took a wooden stirring spoon and shut the door. He climbed up onto the two-step stool that was in front of the sink and hauled his buckets, one at a time, into the sink. He had to pull his hand back from them pretty fast, since the cold spell that Brittany The Beach Wizard had put on them back on the surface was still active. Maybe it had been prestidigitation; he couldn’t remember that wizardly shit, it wasn’t on his character sheet. But she had done good work. He almost wished he hadn’t short-changed her a couple copper pieces.  
Merle leaned over the counter and grabbed the handle of the second-largest metal pot that was lined up with all the other pots against the kitchen’s back tile wall. He pulled it over onto the element of the stove, and then took the first bucket from the sink and tipped it into the pot.  
When he clicked the induction burner on it lit up the stovetop with a pretty blue glow. He was glad that Fantasy Home Depot had finally started selling induction options; he didn’t mind gas appliances, but he also didn’t explicitly trust Taako or Magnus around fire.    
  
In about ten minutes the pot was boiling merrily, and the smell of the ocean was wafting through the apartment. Merle had sat himself on the couch with a magazine and his reading glasses.    
He looked up when he heard the front door open. “Hey boys,” he called out.

“Oh hey, Merle,” Magnus said as he took off his outdoor-moon shoes and light jacket. “How was the cleric festival?”  
“Oh fine, fine,” Merle replied quickly. “Boring, really. Just cleric stuff. Lots of talking about philosophy.”  
“That does sound boring,” Magnus said, and then laughed his booming laugh.  
Good grief. Merle rolled his eyes. “How was the Moon Theatres play?” He asked pointedly.  
“It was great! We had a good time. Right, Taako?”  
  
“He cried a lot,” Taako said. The elf had removed his hat and was sticking his nose over the stove. “What are these, uh, crassostrea gigas?”     
“If that means ‘oysters’, then yeah. I… had a bit of time after the festival so I picked some up. Making some for the potluck, y’know.”  
“Oh cool, cool.” Taako’s tone was light but his ears were pricked, and he kept making little flicking movements with his fingers that’d make Merle suspicious he was putting some kind of magic on them, except that Taako always favoured the ‘annoying spectacle’ kind of magics and there weren’t any sparks or colours flying out of his hands. “You know, a pinot grigio would go really well with these.”  
“Whatever that means,” Magnus butted in. He’d joined Taako at the stove, jostling him to the side a little. He looked at the pot with interest. “They’re so dark!”  
Taako’s ears pinned down while he scowled. “It’s a wine,” he said. “Goes well with seafood.”  
“Well you know what they say about _see food_ \--”

  
“And that’s enough of that,” Merle cut in loudly. He put the magazine down, took off his glasses and went over to the kitchen, shooing them out of the way. “They’re not done cooking yet. Too much talking in the stove spoils them.”  
Taako side-stepped him, leaning on the counter under the fantasy microwave, still scowling.  
“Sorry,” Magnus said, a bit sheepishly. He stepped back from the stove. “I’ve never had oysters before.”  
“Ah, well.” Merle relented. “There’s a first time for everything.” Stirring the pot with the wooden spoon revealed some shells at the bottom still stubbornly stuck closed. Merle decided to let it cook a little longer.  
Magnus spoke up again, “They smell pretty good.”  
“Old family recipe,” Merle told him. “We always used to make this for special occasions. We did drink wine with it, too,” he added, looking over at Taako. “I don’t know about pinot… thing you said, but back on the old, y’know, homestead, good dwarf wine always went down well with cooked clams.”  
_Probably,_ he finished silently. In truth, when there was good dwarf wine involved it was rare for anyone imbibing to remember anything else they ate with it the next morning. Or afternoon.  
Taako kept his artful scowl up, but his ears relaxed back into their normal state. “Dwarven red wine would work too,” he allowed.  
“I think it’ll be great no matter what you make with it,” Magnus said bracingly.      
  
Merle turned and smiled at him briefly. “Hey, d’you boys want to help?”  
“Sure!” Magnus stepped forward, hands at the ready. “What do you need?”  
“Yeah, I guess,” Taako said at the same time, standing up so he wasn’t leaning on the counter anymore. “What’ve you got?”  


Merle stepped down from the stool and stood back, instructing Taako on what kind of butter would work best for the mussels and telling Magnus how to pour out the cooked oysters into a bowl with minimum spillage. As he talked he waved his soulwood arm, not noticing how its blooms were unfolding again.


End file.
